"Swimming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... go out there! There's an awful current! Bevis warned us about it!" gasped Mavis, swimming securely with one foot on the ground. "Can't we ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... own case, how strangely there come swimming up before us, out of the depths of the dim waters of oblivion—as one has seen some bright shell drawn from the sunless sea-caves, and gleaming white and shapeless far down before we had it on the surface—past ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... breast, put it between Hurlbut's eyes and fired. The latter naturally started to one side, so it happened that he only received one shot in his ear. The charge went into the wall, where it made a mark like a bullet's, which was long visible. George Patrullo was drowned not long after while swimming in the Schuylkill river, and Richard Seldener perished on an Atlantic steamer, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... with buildings on them for swimming baths. On one we saw "Swimming School," written in German. A foot regiment passed us with black-and-brass helmets, dark-drab long coats, black belts and scabbards. They had a very sombre appearance, but were fine-looking fellows, evidently ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... the water on the two sides of it. On the one side it was turbid and gray, and perfectly opaque. You could not have seen the pollywogs in the shallowest places along the margin. On the other side it was so clear and transparent that you could have seen fishes swimming where it was ten feet deep. It was of such a rich and beautiful blue color, too, as if it had been tinted with a dye, and the color was of so rich and brilliant a hue, that Mrs. Holiday was ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... Seine; and in the summer the pupils went there to pass some of their holidays, when those who had behaved well were allowed to bathe in the river. Now it so happened that, because of some student peccadillo, the headmaster had deprived the whole school of the pleasure of swimming; however my brother Theodore loved swimming, so he and some of his friends decided to go swimming without the knowledge of their masters. While the pupils were spread about the park playing, they went to an isolated spot where they climbed over the wall and, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... never made a single comfortable meal at an American hotel. The meat was swimming in grease, and the female servants uncivil, impudent, dirty, slow, and provoking. Occasionally they are a little slow, it must be confessed; but I never met with one, male or female, who was uncivil, impudent, or provoking. If I supposed ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... solemn things, I sent myself to sleep again, as was natural enough—but no more to dream. I slept soundly until late in the morning, and breakfasted at the Bains Deligny, a delightful swimming-bath near the Pont de la Concorde (on the other side), and spent most of the day there, alternately swimming, and dozing, and smoking cigarettes, and thinking of the wonders of the night before, and hoping for their repetition on the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... need to go any farther," he declared. "It's a peach of a place. There's a creek that reaches up in the woods for miles; and they have canoes and skating and a swimming-hole; and there are tennis-courts everywhere; and it's only eleven miles from the city. I say we just camp here, and not bother about going on to the other place. I'm satisfied. If that house is big enough, it's ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... creeping into the valley, and as it brightened and deepened and warmed momentarily, Alix felt some of the peace and glory of it swelling in her tired heart. The sky grew pale, grew white, gradually turned to blue, and the little clouds drifting across it vanished, lost in a swimming ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... had been swimming into their deductions so confidently, were brought up abruptly. Phyllis glanced at Jim and ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... was seen on our return, swimming within two yards of the boat, and a musket, charged with a ball and buck-shot, was uselessly fired at it. The appearance of these animals in the water is very deceptious; they lie quite motionless, and resemble a branch of a tree floating with the tide; the snout, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... does he say?—some animal, having to swim across the Nile, never fails to provide himself with a bit of reed, which he bites off and holds in his mouth transversely and so puts from shore gallantly ... because when the water-serpent comes swimming to meet him, there is the reed, wider than his serpent's jaws, and no hopes of a swallow that time—now fancy the two meeting heads, the frog's wide eyes and ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... was most enthusiastic. From Presburg he was accompanied for about two miles by the swimming club and he was made an honorary member by a vote taken while he was paddling in the river surrounded by his swimming friends. He was then left alone and all that day he traveled through a barren and desolate country. He occasionally ran across parties of gold dust hunters who were at work on the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... almost under the volcano, and moored his boat not far from a cliff peaked with guano. Exercising due caution this time, he got up to the lagoons, and found a great many ducks swimming about. He approached little parties to examine their varieties. They all swam out his way; some of them even flew a few yards, and then settled. Not one would let him come within forty yards. This convinced Hazel the ducks were not natives of the island, but strangers, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... favourite food, Luce," said Basil; "now I think they are fonder of dogs than anything else. I have often known them to come where they had heard the yelping of a dog as if for the purpose of devouring it. I have seen one seize a large dog that was swimming across the Bayou Boeuf, and drag him under, as quick as a trout would have taken a fly. The ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... and sent the sea birds screaming. Smoke arose, and flashing fire, and an excitement—an excitement—an excitement.—Then it was, ladies, that I forgot to be afraid. The turtle swam on, toward the Cumberland, swimming as fast as Montgomery coal and the engines that had lain at the bottom of the sea could make her go. There was a frightful noise within her shell, a humming, a shaking. The Congress, the gunboats and the shore batteries kept firing broadsides. There was an enormous, thundering noise, and the air ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... that wound to and fro up the mountain-side. At the best, they could not reach home before ten o'clock. The road went to and fro—sometimes open, to give a view of the Campagna and the Sabine Mountains, and Soracte swimming in a lustrous dimness on the horizon; sometimes shut in closely by trees, that made it almost black in spite of the moon. For the moon was low and gave but little light, being but a crescent as yet. There was a shooting star now and then, breaking out like a rocket with ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... board walks nor crowds to shut out the vision of the sea. He leaped along the sand and dived into the water with his old enthusiasm. He played like a fish in the ocean. He taught Burns several things about swimming, and played pranks like a school-boy. He basked in the sun and told jokes, laughing at Pat's brilliant wit and Burns's dry humor. At night they took long walks upon the sand and talked of deep things that Pat could scarcely understand. He was satisfied to stride ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... in such terror of David's perspicacity, that he locked himself into his pretty new study until he could recover himself, his head was swimming in this new position. So he must leave the rooms just furnished for him at such a cost, and all the sacrifices that had been made for him had been made in vain. Then it occurred to Lucien that his mother might take the rooms and save David the heavy expense of building at the end of the yard, ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... small, shell-covered rocks and stones being strewn over it at haphazard. From under the slightly overhanging base of one of these stones sprouted what seemed a cluster of yellowish gray, pink-mottled weed-stems, which sprawled out inertly upon the mottled bottom. Over the edge of the stone came swimming slowly one of the gold-and-azure fish, its jewelled, impassive eyes on the watch for some small prey. Up from the bottom, swift as a whip-lash, darted one of those inert-looking weed-stems, and fastened about the bright fish just ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... issues: pollution of coastal waters and shorelines from discharges by pleasure yachts and other effluents; in some areas, pollution is severe enough to make swimming prohibitive ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... was standing on the big hawser-bitts in a position to see a man in the water who seemed deliberately swimming away from the ship. He was a dark-skinned Mediterranean of some sort, and his face, in a clear glimpse I caught of it, was distorted by frenzy. His black eyes were maniacal. The line was so accurately flung by the second ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... have been impossible. Only one with at least a dram of dizziness could have conceived an "eagle-baffling mountain, black, wintry, dead, unmeasured." In the days when we read Jules Verne, was not our chief pleasure found in his marvelous way of suspending us with swimming senses over some fearful abyss; wet and slippery crags maybe, and void and blackness before us and below; and then just to give full measure of fright, a sound of running water in the depths. Doesn't it raise the hair? Could a ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... sometimes draws the boat under water; on which, if no auxiliary boat, or convenient piece of ice, be at hand, the crew are plunged into the sea, and are obliged to trust to their oars or their skill in swimming, for supporting themselves on ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... in every phase of school life and was devoted to athletics. In cricket he was quick and adroit as a fielder, but he had no skill either as a batsman—doubtless owing to his visual defect—or as a bowler. Very fond of swimming, he was a regular visitor to the college swimming bath. He had great endurance in the water, but lacked speed, and much to his disappointment failed to get his swimming colours. His love of swimming never waned, and in the sea he would swim long distances. Swimming ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... a bench in front of the Aquarium to eat their luncheon, and the children could scarcely wait to finish, they were so eager to press their noses against the glass and watch the funny creatures swimming in the tanks. Maria clapped her hands and declared the best of all were the ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... had been deterred by the fear of storms; for they were frequent, and severe enough to capsize an ordinary row-boat like ours without great difficulty—and once capsized, death would ensue in spite of the bravest swimming, for that venomous water would eat a man's eyes out like fire, and burn him out inside, too, if he shipped a sea. It was called twelve miles, straight out to the islands—a long pull and a warm one—but the morning was so quiet and sunny, and the lake so smooth and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... so quick.... Water came in through the ventilator.... I couldn't move the door... dark as a grave... tried to scramble up into the upper berth.... Rats... a rat bit my finger as I got up.... I could hear him swimming below me.... I thought you would never come... I thought you were all gone overboard... of course... Could hear nothing but the wind.... Then you came... to look for the corpse, I suppose. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... this, up starts an old Priest about threescore Years of Age, his Name was Adam. He strips himself to his Shirt, throws away his Boots and Shoes, and bids us all in like Manner to prepare ourselves for swimming. Then standing in the middle of the Ship, he preach'd a Sermon to us, upon the five Truths of the Benefit of Confession, and exhorted every Man to prepare himself, for either Life or Death. There was a Dominican there too, and ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... 's my boy—my boy? What care I for the ship, sailor, I never was aboard her. Be she afloat, or be she aground, Sinking or swimming, I'll be bound, Her owners can afford her! I say how's my John?— "Every man on board went down, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... book, and continued to watch the lads with some interest. The boys reached their accustomed track among the waves; and, leaving their boat as usual, seemed to enjoy their sport with more zest than ever. Whilst in the water, the breeze freshened, and it was with great difficulty, and not without hard swimming, that the lads regained their boat, which driven before the wind, seemed determined to reach the shore without them. They succeeded at last, dressed themselves, and stood in for the land. A long line of heavy surf was ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... snow-storm, and the beginning of that domestic storm that was destined strangely to change some of the lives nearest her, Annie went in to have luncheon with her sister. It was a brilliant sunshiny winter day, with crossings swimming in melting snow and roofs steaming ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... swimming about in the river, although he was now only about four inches long, with a set of external gills, just like those of an eft. There are land-babies, and why not water-babies? Some people tell us that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... it is done with a pen, is called penmanship, and when done with a chisel, should be called chiselmanship; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys sprawling on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and dragged along ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... with a negro whose strong legs turned the pedals of a wheel chair in which my companion and I rode one day through the Palm Beach jungle trail. It is a wonderful place, that jungle, with its tangled trunks and vines and its green foliage swimming in sifted sunlight; with its palms, palmettoes, ferns, and climbing morning-glories, its banana trees, gnarled rubber banyans, and wild mangoes—which are like trees growing upside down, digging their spreading branches into the ground. For a ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... 'twas true, indeed, that his Ship and he were cast away, much about that Time that the Gentleman gave Fairlaw a Relation: That 'twas certain he had lost above 12000l. and had like to have lost his Life; but being very expert in Swimming, he got to Shoar upon the Coast of Barbary, the Wreck happening not to be above three Leagues thence; he was in almost as bad a Condition as if he had been drown'd, for here he was made a Prisoner to one of the Natives; in which miserable Circumstance he lanquish'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... to luncheon, and she longed to have him go, that she might be alone with the thought of him. He left early in the afternoon, and she locked herself in her room and sat for hours staring into the tree-tops swimming in their blue haze. She was not in the least terrified at the beginnings of tumult within her; she rather welcomed them as the birthright of her sex. In this first stage, she hardly cared whether Trennahan were in love with her or not, having none ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... down, a little hypnotized by the sleepy strumming, the slow giddy movement of the dancers, and those half-closed swimming eyes of his young daughter, looking at him over her shoulder as she went by. He sat with a smile on his lips. Nollie was growing up! Now that Gratian was married, she had become a great responsibility. If only his dear wife had lived! The smile faded from his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he had finished his lollipop, and partly because, as I told you before, crocodiles are very moody and not the least bit dependable and are always looking for something to eat, the first crocodile had turned away from the bank and started swimming down the river. The second crocodile hadn't finished yet, so he followed right after the first, still sucking his lollipop. All the rest did the same thing, one right after the other, until they were all swimming away in a line. The two wild ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... tide fall this afternoon as low as it fell in the morning, our situation will indeed become critical. The water around the ship may possibly serve as a temporary protection, but the distance to the reef is so small that it might be passed by swimming." ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... were taught that they must become very strong and manly. They had running, jumping, leaping, swimming, and racing exercises, to give them rigid muscles and strong, healthy bodies. Occasionally they were allowed to visit at their homes for a day or two. The boys were also taught to ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... of a great variety of parts and conveniences; the natationes, or swimming places; the portici, where people amused themselves in walking, conversing, and disputing together, as Cicero says, In porticibus deambulantes disputabant; the basilicae, where the bathers assembled, before they entered, and after they came out of the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... earth or of sky to be seen—only water, and the gray sponge filling the upper air, through which coursed multitudinous perpendicular runnels of water. Clad in a pair of old trowsers and a jersey, he went wading, and where the ground dipped, swimming, to the western gate of the churchyard. In a few minutes he was at the kitchen window, holding the boat in a long painter, for the water, although quite up to the rectory walls, was not yet deep enough there to float the boat ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... The difficulty of swimming against that sweet stream of sovereign humours in the well-tempered Elizabeth, was aggravated by his quarrel, at this period, with the magnificent Oxford. A dispute at a tennis-court, where many courtiers and foreigners were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... frequently marched across country to the commissary depots of the several armies. After the fall of Port Hudson, the connection for such supplies was practically stopped; although I may recall that even as late as 1864, the command to which I was attached had the opportunity of stopping the swimming across the Mississippi of a herd of cattle that was in transit for the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... conversation, steered by the lawyer into the safer channels, turned to tennis, swimming, and other sports. Seaton, whose plate was unobtrusively kept full by Mr. Vaneman, ate such a dinner as he had not eaten in weeks. After the meal was over they all went into the spacious living-room, where the men ensconced themselves in comfortable Morris chairs ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... he has forgotten himself; he will easily recover his memory, if only he first recognises me. And that he may do so, let me now wipe his eyes that are clouded with a mist of mortal things.' Thereat, with a fold of her robe, she dried my eyes all swimming with tears. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... lessons then, 'cause Miss Marston goes away for her holidays, and we can be out of doors all day long if we choose; papa doesn't mind as long as we're in time for meals and looking clean and decent. There's a lovely cove near our house,—it isn't deep or dangerous,—and there we go boating and swimming; then there's fishing and crabbing, and drives about the country in the big, rattly depot-wagon behind Pegasus,—that's our horse, but he's an awful old slow-poke,—and rides on our donkey, G. W. L. Spry. Oh, I tell you now, it's all just splendid! We always ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... toss-up whether water-power or mule-power would prevail. Through the caldron roar of storm-fed waters, then, the girl could hear the heavy, straining breath in the beast's lungs, and the strong lashing of its swimming legs. She caught her lip till it bled between her teeth and clung tight and steady, knowing her danger but seeking to add no ounce of difficulty to the battle for strength and equilibrium of the animal under her. And they had won through ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... and detained with the rest. The 31st we began to take in fresh water, to be ready for departing, as our stay here seemed so very uncertain. This day, Thomas Smith, the master's boy, had most of the outer part of one of his thighs bitten off by a great fish, while swimming about the ship. The ravenous fish drew him under water, yet he came up again and swam to the ship, and got up to the bend, where he fainted. Being brought into the gun-room, the surgeon endeavoured to do what he could for his recovery; but he ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... in his finishing touches this morning I thought of my mother. She was like that when they brought my brother Archie home. You remember Archie—and the day he was drowned? We were all in swimming that Sunday, you know, and Parson Moore said it was a judgment, but my poor mother could not bring herself ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... beyond, into the bank or bight of Arguin, he saw a little island, from which twenty-five canoes came off to meet him, all hollowed out of logs of wood, with a host of native savages, "naked not for swimming in the water, but for their ancient custom." The natives hung their legs over the sides of their boats, and paddled with them like oars, so that "our men, looking at them from a distance and quite unused to the sight, thought they were birds that were skimming so over the water." As ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... of horror escaped him, and he clambered down some rocks and overthrown pine-stems, in order to reach the rushing stream and by wading or swimming to seek the fugitive on the other side. He remembered all the awful and wonderful things which he had encountered, even by day, under the now rustling and roaring branches of the forest. Above all it seemed to him as if a tall ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... eye. Then thronging memories awoke. My remembrances of all my past life in the crowded cities of America and Europe rose vividly before me. In the long strata of solid gray clouds, where the sun had gone down, leaving only a few vapory gold-fishes swimming in the clear spaces above, I could fancy I saw the lonely Roman Campagna and the wondrous dome of St. Peter's, as when first beheld on the horizon ten years ago. Then, as from the slopes of San Miniato at sunset, gray, red-tiled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... mother, My tongue is parched and bound, And my head, somehow or other, Is swimming round and round. In my eyes there is a fulness, And my pulse is beating quick; On my brain is a weight of dulness: ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... in the vicinity had already set themselves afloat, and were swimming in regular columns toward their homes. But these noble mares, with wonderful perseverance, remained immovable under their cherished burden for the space of six hours, till, the tide ebbing, the water subsided, and the colts ...
— Minnie's Pet Horse • Madeline Leslie
... amazement, for directly after catching sight of the head of some lad in the water about a couple of hundred yards below us, who seemed to be swimming about in the cool water with the greatest ease, my companions began to throw off caps and jackets, and to untie and kick ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... fury filled Geoffrey's heart. He walked down the room and shut the door, a red light swimming before his eyes. Then he turned and gripped Owen Davies's shoulder like ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... the mighty river, saw where it dashed over the rocks in dust and flew with the clouds to carry the rainbow. I saw the wild buffalo swimming in the river, but the stream carried him away; he floated with the wild duck, which soared into the sky at the rapids; but the buffalo was carried over with the water. I liked that and blew a storm, so that the primaeval trees had to sail ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... strength, her perils begin; she then needs not merely to be allured to exertion, but to be protected against over-exertion; experience shows that she cannot be turned loose, cannot be safely left with boyish freedom to take her fill of running, rowing, riding, swimming, skating,—because life-long injury may be the penalty of a single excess. This necessity for caution cannot be the normal condition, for such caution cannot be exerted for the female peasant or savage, but it seems the necessary condition for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... among trappers, that the beaver uses his tail for a trowel to flatten down the mud, but this is denied by more observing naturalists, who assert that the tail is merely employed for swimming, although when he is at work with his paws, he may flap it about, but not for ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... was that Brown, thrilling with all the romance and adventure he had read and guessed and never lived, took his place in the sternsheets of a whaleboat, loaded with rifles and cartridges, rowed by four Baiatea sailors, steered by a golden-brown, sea-swimming faun, and directed through the warm tropic darkness toward the half-mythical love island of Fuatino, which had been invaded by ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... occasions of exaltation would be far too deeply moved to sing. She was inundated by a swimming sense of boundaries nearly transcended, as though she was upon the threshold of a different life altogether, the real enduring life, and as though if she could only maintain herself long enough in this shimmering exaltation she would get right over; things would happen, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... at cards had deeply depressed him. Seeing her atrocious Benjamin so pale and woe-begone, the poor mother knelt beside him, kissed his hands, pressed them to her heart, and gazed at him for a long time with eyes swimming ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... watching her swimming cork for over an hour when the first light western breeze arrived, spreading a dainty ripple across the pond. Her cork danced, drifted; beneath it she caught the momentary glimmer of the minnow; then the cork was jerked under; she clasped the pole with all her strength, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... native loveliness. Never had he beheld such enchanting beauty; but one even more exquisitely charming than the rest attracted his gaze, and from the instant fixed the affections of his heart. They now plunged into the basin, where for some time they amused themselves by swimming, every now and then playfully dashing the water over themselves and at each other. When satiated with frolic they came out of the water, sat for some time on the verdant margin, then dressed themselves, and adjusting their robes to the air, soared aloft, and were soon far from the sight of the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... was dotted with naked bodies, and the stream itself showed head after head, and flashing white arms as men went swimming. Some were scrubbing themselves, taking a Briton's keen delight in a bath, no matter what the circumstances in which he gets it; others were washing their clothes, slapping and pounding the soaked garments in a way to have wrung the hearts of their wives, had they seen them at ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... it? Why, it is in the water! Isn't that funny? But you see it isn't a real fire, but only a fire-fish. [*] Sweet creature, isn't he? Suppose you were a little, innocent mermaid, swimming alone for the first time; how would you feel if you were to meet this fellow darting towards you with his great red mouth open? Why, you would scream with fright, and swim to your mother as fast as you could, and catch hold of her ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... feet basked in the heat and light which shone through the door of the stove, I gave myself up to a sensation of enjoyment, made more lively by the consciousness of the storm which raged without. My eyes, swimming in a sort of mist, wandered over all the details of my peaceful abode; they passed from my prints to my bookcase, resting upon the little chintz sofa, the white curtains of the iron bedstead, and the portfolio of loose papers—those archives of the attics; and then, returning to the book I held ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... an Earthwoman, this Solis Lacus Lowland. No swimming, no boating, no skiing. No water and no snow. Just a vast expanse of salty ground, blanketed with gray-green canal sage and dotted with the plastic domes of the resort chateaus. Nothing to do but hike in a marsuit or ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... supplied to several small and one large swimming bath, have a temperature of from 66 to 68 degrees of Fahrenheit. They are not now much in fashion, therefore the village has continued a village, and is extremely quiet or dull according to the tastes ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... draggled leaves, the trunk is a sailing garden of flowers. But the adornment is that of Nature—it is the decoration of another and a strange element: the roots are in the air; the boughs which should be full of birds, are in the flood, covered by its alien products, swimming side by side with the alligator. So has this priestcraft swept its victims from their natural place and independent growth, to clothe them in their helplessness with a false spiritual adornment, neither scriptural nor ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... glad to accept the invitation, for he was getting pretty hungry by now. But they had to go through many beautiful grounds with strange summer-houses, and high walls, and ponds with rainbow goldfish swimming in them, before they reached the main part of the palace itself. Then the Queen sat down on her throne, with her mandarins around her, all dressed in those funny coats like pajama-tops and embroidered with ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... Estelle. "I'll be very glad to, and it's easy. It's like swimming—all you need is confidence, and to learn not to be afraid of your horse but to trust him. Let me ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... body splashed into the water, the horseman asked, 'Is it done?' and the others answered, 'Yes, sir,' and he at once turned right about face; but seeing the dead man's cloak floating, he asked what was that black thing swimming about. 'Sir,' said one of the men, 'it is his cloak'; and then another man picked up some stones, and running to the place where it was still floating, threw them so as to make it sink under; as soon, as it had quite disappeared, they went off, and after walking a ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... timid waders could dip their toes and splash their hair in the shallow basin in-shore. The more advanced could wade out shoulder-deep, and puff and flounder with one foot on the ground and the other up above their heads, and delude the world into the notion they were swimming. For others there was the spring-board, from which to take a header into deep water; and, further out still, the rocks rose in ledges, where practised divers could take the water from any height they liked, ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Dr. Peppercorn, I can't help longing for the water. I don't believe it is going to hurt me; at any rate, here goes," and in he plumped, and in went every duck after him, and they threw out their great brown feet as cleverly as if they had taken swimming lessons all their lives, and sailed off on the river, away, away among the ferns, under the pink azaleas, through reeds and rushes, and arrow-heads and pickerel-weed, the happiest ducks that ever were born; and soon they were quite ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... her large blue eyes, swimming in tears, to Lionel. It completely disarmed him. He forgot all his prudence, all his caution; he forgot things that it was incumbent upon him to remember; and, as many another has done before him, older and wiser than Lionel Verner, he suffered a moment's impassioned ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... sight, but far in the distance Budmouth lay upon the sea, as it were quietly regarding his efforts, and beside the town the harbour showed its position by a dim meshwork of ropes and spars. After well-nigh exhausting himself in attempts to get back to the mouth of the cove, in his weakness swimming several inches deeper than was his wont, keeping up his breathing entirely by his nostrils, turning upon his back a dozen times over, swimming en papillon, and so on, Troy resolved as a last resource to tread water at a slight incline, and so endeavour to reach the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... and its winding walks, its groves and copses of trees and shrubbery, its beds and borders of flowers, and above all its beautiful little lake, with gayly-painted boats to sail upon it, and flocks of ducks, and geese, and swans, of every form and color, swimming in all directions over the surface of the water. On the side of it is the Green Park—a broad expanse of the smoothest and richest green, intersected with drives and walks, all crowded with promenaders. Behind the palace is ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... started (now Englishwoman's Review) by Bessie R. Parkes and Mdme. Bodichon, March 2.... First swimming bath for ladies, opened in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... there used to be children in the water, and mermaids too, and mermen. I saw them all in a picture at home, of a beautiful lady sailing in a car drawn by dolphins, and babies flying round her, and one sitting in her lap; and the mermaids swimming and playing, and the mermen trumpeting on conch-shells; and it is called 'The Triumph of Galatea'; and there is a burning mountain in the picture behind. It hangs on the great staircase, and I have looked at it ever since I was a baby, and dreamt about ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... and lively one, and Phebe threw herself into it with the same fervor which had marked her entrance into slumming, and, before that, into medicine. Skeletons and syllabi appeared to be alike forgotten; golf and swimming lessons took their place, and Phebe revelled in her out-of-door life as simply and as sincerely as Mac himself. Out on the cliff at dawn, down on the beach for the bathing hour, out to the links for ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... a cunning rogue, now formed a pretty scheme to take the Governor and chief inhabitants prisoners and to hold them for a big ransom. This plan was spoilt by a Portuguese slave swimming to shore and telling the Governor all about it, and worse, telling him about the little affair of Davis and his visit to the ladies in the wood. The Governor now laid his plans, and with such success that Davis walked unsuspecting ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... beside the crackling fire, in the shifting shadows of the great chamber, Altascar told me how he had that morning met the horse of George Tryan swimming on the prairie; how that, farther on, he found him lying, quite cold and dead, with no marks or bruises on his person; that he had probably become exhausted in fording the creek, and that he had as probably reached the mound only ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... determined that his conqueror should not enjoy this pleasure. He resolved to attempt to save himself by swimming the river. He accordingly went first, breathless, and covered with dust and blood from the fight, to take a hurried leave of his mother, his wives, and his children, who, as was customary in those countries and times, had accompanied ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... him to be a poor, lazy little fellow. However, I thought that when he got some good grass, and a little fat on his ribs he might have more life, and so I hitched a rope to him and drove him ahead down the river. When I came to the Bad Axe river I found it swimming full, but had no trouble in crossing, as the pony was as good as a ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... and by such rulers: the crippled remnant of a faction and sect, some hundreds of preachers no longer believing in their creed, usurpers as despised as they are detested, second-rate parvenus raised their heads not through their capacity or merit, but through the blind upheavals of a revolution, swimming on the surface for lack of weight, and, like foul scum, borne along to the crest of the wave-such are the wretches who strangle France under the pretence of setting her free, who bleed her under the pretence of making her ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to brag; one must be a good American; but, honestly, have we anything like that to show the arriving foreigner? For some reason our ship was abating the speed with which she had crossed the Atlantic, and now she was swimming along the Mediterranean coasts so slowly and so closely that it seemed as if we could almost have cast an apple ashore, though probably we could not. We were at least far enough off to mistake Nice for Monte Carlo and then for San Remo, but that was partly because our course was so leisurely, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... a family. She could not or would not look to see what Gerald was doing with the wretched little coast boy; but she heard her companion say that the gentleman had put the boy down to scramble among the rocks, and he himself was going back to the pair on the rock, quite swimming now. ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... boy—my boy? What care I for the ship, sailor, I was never aboard her. Be she afloat or be she aground, Sinking or swimming, I'll be bound Her owners can afford her! I say, how's my John?" "Every man on board went down, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... river itself however continues of the same width, and the sandbars are quite as numerous. The soil of the banks is dark coloured, and many of the bluffs have the appearance of being on fire. Our game this day was a deer, a prairie wolf, and some goats out of a flock that was swimming across ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... transported; then there came a landslide and carried half the road into a canon. So it went on, one thing and another. If ever that darned mine had got into working order, right kind of ore, water enough and not too much, roads and machinery all right, and everything swimming, the Day ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... carpenter, in his mad fit, swam off to the ship in the night, though she lay then a league to sea, and made such pitiful moan to be taken in, that the captain was prevailed with at last to take him in, though they let him lie swimming three hours in the water before ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... scratch the surface of the artistic attractions in this Hague gallery. Not the least of them is to look out on the Vyver lake and watch the swans placidly swimming around the emerald islet in the middle. The Mauritshuis is a cabinet of gems, and months could not stale its variety. There are important omissions, and some of the names in the catalogue are not represented at top-notch. But the Rembrandts are there, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... dogs," said the lady, rather agitated: "if you will not take it," and she held it once more before him, "here it goes for ever." So saying she emptied the tumbler into a large globe of glass, in which some gold and silver fish were swimming ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Like swimming against a mighty will, that wears The cruelty, the race and scolding spray ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... gently slopping all over the first floor of our habitation. The streets were flowing waist high, and filled with floating debris of all kinds;—beer kegs, boards, doors, and tables ad lib. The wind soon began to quiet down, and when our first fright was over we had a high old time swimming and splashing around in the water. It's a great city that will bring salt water bathing right up to ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... father must work us like galley slaves, thus, at the hoe and the spade! More fortunate lads all have gone to the circus, they revel in peanuts and pink lemonade! Oh, what is the profit of pruning and trimming, and sowing the radish, and planting the yam, when everyone knows there is excellent swimming two miles up the creek at the foot ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... as the wilderness and suited it to peace time instead of war. We have made the scout an expert in Life-craft as well as Wood-craft, for he is trained in the things of the heart as well as head and hand. Scouting we have made to cover riding, swimming, tramping, trailing, photography, first aid, camping, handicraft, loyalty, obedience, ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... the pathway. One might bear slights and indignities, even positive opposition, but the insinuation that one was vulgar enough to go swimming at all, much more with boys, was an insult no human being could stand. She turned away slowly, and, as the two inexorable figures went on down the willow path into the ravine, she dropped upon the earth and burst ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... taken place in an instant. I hurried on, with all my thoughts on this lady who was thus doomed to so sudden and so terrible a fate. I could see the sleigh floating for a time, and the head of the horse, that was swimming. I sprang to a place which seemed to give a chance of assisting them, and looked eagerly to see what had become of the lady. The sleigh drifted steadily along, one of that box-shaped kind called pungs, which are sometimes ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... He knew very well he had been cheated, though he could not think how. Once he desired to have some water brought him from the well into which Ilonka had been thrown. The coachman went for it and, in the bucket he pulled up, a pretty little duck was swimming. He looked wonderingly at it, and all of a sudden it disappeared and he found a dirty looking girl standing near him. The girl returned with him and managed to get a place as housemaid in ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... there was a deep indenture. Back in there would go the bathing pavilions. They even went up to look at it, and were delighted to find a natural, shallow bowl. By cementing the floor of that bowl they could have a splendid swimming-pool for timid bathers, where they could not go beyond their depth; and it was entirely surrounded by a thick screen of shrubbery. Oh, it was delightful; it was perfect! At the road they looked back up over the valley again. It was no longer a valley. It was a lake. They could ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... landward from where she stood. So she laughed, and did off her other raiment, and slid swiftly into the water, that embraced her body in all its fresh kindness; and as for Birdalone, she rewarded it well for its past toil by sporting and swimming to ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... flights of birds and far surpassed the scope of feathered fowls, how swift soever they had been on the wing, and notwithstanding that advantage which they have of us in swimming through the air. Taproban hath seen the heaths of Lapland, and both the Javas and Riphaean mountains; wide distant Phebol shall see Theleme, and the Islanders drink of the flood Euphrates. By it the chill-mouthed Boreas hath surveyed ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the British Museum, while copies of many of them are in the Crystal Palace. There we see these terrible Assyrian conquerors defeating their enemies, torturing and slaughtering their prisoners, swimming rivers, beating down castles, sweeping on from land to land like a devouring fire, while over their heads fly fierce spirits who protect and prosper their cruelties, and eagles who trail in their claws the entrails of the slain. The very ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... consideration where to begin with the easiest, and so proceed to the more difficult; and in what courses to press the more difficult, and then to turn them to the more easy; for it is one method to practise swimming with bladders, and another to ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... stumbled up to us, until finally the whole silent congregation of the previous evening was reassembled, and we saw how, above the horizon, there rose a little carmine-red ball, spreading a dim, wintry light. Far around, amid the mists, rose the mountains, as if swimming in a white rolling sea, only their summits being visible, so that we could imagine ourselves standing on a little hill in the midst of an inundated plain, in which here and there rose dry clods of earth. To retain what I saw and felt, I sketched ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... forget that slim white creature, swathed in her veil of long, light golden hair, as she crouched on the bottom of Mercer's swimming pool, and pictured for us, by means of Mercer's thought-telegraph (my own name for the device; he has a long and scientific title for it with as many joints as a centipede), the story of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... open at the top. She could see no ventilation of any kind in her white cell. By the time her heavy outdoor things were on she was faint with exhaustion, and hurried down the corridor towards the shouts and splashings echoing in the great, open, glass-roofed swimming-bath. She was just in time to see a figure in scarlet and white, standing out on the high gallery at the end of a projecting board which broke the little white balustrade, throw up its arms and leap out and flash—its joined hands pointed downwards towards ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... back, and plunged into a marsh up to our knees. So high must we lift our feet that we walked with a sound of swimming. Each forward stride was an enormous effort which ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse |
